I look forward to GLVAR MLS Tech Forum every year. Stephanie Hill puts on a great event. The event is next week and this year the one and only Stefan Swanepoel will be doing the keynote.

Surprisingly enough they asked me to kick off the event by moderating a panel on technology. So I reached out to a diverse set of people I really respect and who are much smarter than me, Greg Fischer, Sarah Trent Miranda, and Jeff Turner. But I wanted to be a little counter intuitive, and ask the panel, “What technology do agents actually need?”

““More and more companies are realizing that RESO standards are not just for MLSs,” RESO CEO Sam DeBord said, in a statement. “EXp Realty is showing great leadership as a brokerage pushing interoperability and technology innovation for the entire industry.”DeBord also used the occasion of the newly announced certification to push other brokerages toward the same goal.”

Well done Glenn and the entire eXp team. I agree with Sam, this is an extraordinary show of leadership.

I attended the first couple days of the recent RESO Fall Conference in St. Louis and have more thoughts on RESO, but I’m saving for a longer post next week.

“SavvyCard is seeking a highly motivated, field-based senior applicant with 8+ years’ experience developing business opportunities and sales with Real Estate Multiple Listing Services and Associations to fill the National Account Executive, Real Estate position. This is an opportunity to join a dynamic, fast moving company with a healthy existing customer pipeline and a compelling and competitively differentiated product offering, at the ground level.”

A special shout out to Vendor Alley sponsor SavvyCard. I had a chance to interview SavvyCard CEO and Co-founder, David Etheridge, on Listing Bits. We had great response to the podcast so I suggest you go and take a listen.

“The Systems Developer role is to define, develop, test, analyze, and maintain software applications in support of the achievement of business requirements. This includes but not limited to writing, coding, testing, and analyzing software programs and applications. The Systems Developer will also research, design, document, and modify software specifications throughout the production life cycle. This is full time mid-level position that reports to the Lead Developer and is a salary, exempt.”

“Specializing in image enhancement, virtual staging, CGI renders, floor plans, and now virtual renovation, BoxBrownie.com are continually providing key marketing solutions for minimal cost to the agent.This partnership means an exclusive on-boarding offer to all current bridgeMLS members who are not currently using BoxBrownie.com. An initiative developed to continue providing innovative technology in an ever-changing industry.”

I believe this is the first MLS deal for Box Brownie. If you are curious about their name, “Box Brownie”, it’s the name a popular early camera made by Eastman Kodak.

These are just the early days of augmented reality coming in to real estate. In a sense virtual tours were the first step. Now virtual staging. Next virtual agents?

I’ve been tracking a few Australian companies that are really starting to get some traction here in the states. Australians are new Canadians in online real estate.

“Bright MLS, a leading multiple listing service representing 95,000 real estate professionals in the Mid-Atlantic U.S., has announced Brian Donnellan as its President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Donnellan had been serving as CEO on an interim basis since February 2019”

Well deserved! If didn’t get to listen to my interview with Brian last month you can check it out here.

I’m looking forward to seeing about some of the great initiatives Brian and his team have in the works. Congrats!

“Chicago, IL, September 06, 2019 –(PR.com)– ShowingTime, the real estate industry’s leading showing management and market stats technology provider, announced today it has acquired Centralized Showing Service to better serve the needs of clients in the residential real estate industry.”

Holy shit! This is huge news. ShowingTime has made a number of acquisitions over the years but this is on a whole other level. Congrats to both companies.

I’m attending the Content Marketing World Conference in Cleveland. I’m told it’s the biggest conference on content marketing in the country. It’s my first year here and its been great. Highly recommend it to any inbound marketers out there.

One of the speakers, and the founder of CMI, Joe Pulizzi, gave a great presentation about the future of marketing. One of his slides struck me. It said simply…

“Prepare for the death of social”

The premise is that social media is reaching a tipping point. Fake news, lack of privacy, hackers and the fact that sooooo many people/companies are pushing ads on social media that it’s becoming somewhat of a cesspool. A platform people will not trust any longer.

I know many agents who leverage social media in their business. Also, many vendors rely on selling ads as a business model. And a lot of those ads (most) are on social media platforms (Facebook).

Joe doesn’t know if this will be one year from now, 3 years, or 5 years. But it’s still good advice.

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This blog is dedicated to the real estate technology industry, from the Vendor’s POV. Lately I’ve been writing reviews on new products and websites. I also love to cover trade shows and conferences and keep up with all the major industry players. It’s an exciting business will a lot of colorful, smart and talented people.

So set your reading glasses to ’satire’, and join me as we try to make sense of the crazy business known as real estate.